Star Wars: Rebellion
by wickedmetalviking1990
Summary: The story of the last years of the Galactic Civil War through the eyes of a simple Rebel Alliance soldier. From the city planet of Hoth to skirmishes across the Inner Rim, see the world of Star Wars as you've never seen it before. Rated T.
1. Chapter 1

**(AN: _Star Wars: Rebellion_ is back with a vengeance! Here's to hoping it will be better than the first draft. Still the same formula, focusing on the 'everyman' of the Rebellion rather than the starfighter pilots, the officers or the young Jedi-in-training. This will focus mainly on events from _ESU_ to _ROTJ_. There may be appearances by some of our other _Star Wars_ OCs, so I refer you to their first appearances for info about them.)**

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><p><strong>A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...<strong>

_It is a dark time for freedom in the galaxy. The Rebel Alliance has been reeling from blow after blow, dealt by the hand of the Galactic Empire following the Battle of Yavin. Chased across the stars, they have not had a moment of respite in almost three years._

_After the failed assault on the Imperial Palace, the Jedi Outcast as gone underground. Her lover, sensing the presence of darkness upon her, throws all caution to the wind and follows after her, in the hopes of saving her from the Dark Side of the Force._

_On the other side of the galaxy, the Rebellion continues to gather support from many sources. A young soldier, Feor Drex, has decided that to throw his lot in with the Rebel Alliance, choosing to fight for the side which he believes will restore order to the shattered galaxy..._

How many people could say that they have been as far as Feor Drex had been? He had only barely gotten off Bakura, his home-planet, before the Imperial armada overthrew the planet's government three years ago. He was hiding on Nar Shadda when he heard of the Battle of Yavin, and believed, like so many, that it was now only a matter of time before the Empire would fall.

Like those thousands - if not millions - of people throughout the galaxy who believed that the ambitious _moffs_ like Tarkin were _really_ in control of the Empire and that their deaths would herald its end, they received a very rude awakening. A coup had been orchestrated on the Imperial Capital itself, which had failed miserably. In the following months, the Empire's fleet movements had become more and more aggressive toward those who were considered potentially hostile. The base on Yavin was obliterated, General Dodonna taken prisoner, and the Rebellion on the run again.

He had gotten off Bakura on time, the same could not be said of his family. They were slain for their affiliation to the Rebellion. Not just them, but the entire population of Kedar City, one of the largest cities and the cultural and intellectual center of Bakura. They were nothing but an example of the vengeance the Empire would bring upon them in the future occupation.

But he, Feor Drex, was alive, and fighting on for his family, for all the lives lost at the Massacre at Kedar.

He was sitting in the huge crew compartment of a GR-75 transport. Only the hum of power throughout the ship and the dull roar of the engines could be heard because of the oxygen in the ship. The sighing and mutterings of those around him were all but drowned out completely.

The sound of howling wind suddenly met his ears. It sounded like a tornado.

"Attention," the voice of the captain called. "We've reached our destination. Before we disembark, we request that you all take the insulator suits that have been provided. They can be picked up in the quartermaster hall."

It wasn't really a hall, just one of the cargo-pods that had been made into a make-shit quartermaster hall, where they were given their supplies and such. As they were currently fighting a war, they had to ration supplies through the quartermasters first.

But why did they need insulator suits?

Once the final thud of their landing was heard, they got up and all began making their way toward the quartermaster room. Feor found himself swept up in the fray of pushing and shoving as they tried to reach what they were after. He found that the insulator suits were actually white jackets, a pair of sand-colored gloves and boots, white uniform pants, and a hat with ear-flaps. Feor walked into one of the smaller cubicles, added for just such purposes, and put on his new uniform. He felt oddly hot, and wondered if he would ever need it.

"We are now opening the rear exit way." the voice of the captain called over on the intercom. "Stand clear."

The grinding of gears and the whining protest of hydraulics sounded as the ramp lowered. A gust of freezing cold air blasted them as they came out to meet it. Had they not been wearing their jackets and insulated uniforms, they might have been frozen to death with that.

"Welcome to Hoth." one of the soldiers at Feor's left said.

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><p><em>Well<em>, Feor thought, _at least we're the only ones here_.

Hoth was still relatively unexplored, even the Republic had little to say regarding who and what lived here: all that was known was that it had not been settled, even in the last thirty years.

Perhaps that was why the Alliance High Command had chosen this planet as their new base of operations. Quietly out of the way and safe from Imperial eyes...for the present.

Even through the insulated suit and the woolen gloves, Feor was shivering with cold. All about him was white, white hills, white mountains, white drifts, white snow, white banks: it was a desert of white. Looking around, he saw that there was something that stood out. A large cave, a hole in the side of one of the white mountains, was being guarded by gun emplacements. From the line of people making their way out of it, he reasoned that this must be their new home.

Echo Base.

All around him were dozens of strange people, new faces of races he hadn't seen in all of his life. A group of rowdy, gun-ho pilots gathered off in one corner of the huge hangar, carved out of the snowy hill. Those must be Rogue Squadron, members of the elite fighter squadron of the Alliance. Two of them, it was said, were at the famed Battle of Yavin three years ago, and one of them had destroyed the Empire's dreaded Death Star.

Feor felt happy to have such worthy ones with them here on Hoth. But he also felt very small and insignificant compared to them. They had flown with veterans of the Clone Wars, gone up against the best the Empire had to offer and were still fighting...not only that, but had one a decisive victory for the Rebellion.

And what was he, Feor Drex? Nothing. He had never flown a starship, never engaged in a dog-fight, never faced off against underworld bounty hunters, never fought his way out of an Imperial slave-camp, he knew no ancient Jedi warriors, he had no political connections, he was no last remnant of a royal household that had been obliterated by the Empire. In fact, all things considered, he was nothing special.

He was just a soldier.

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><p><strong>(AN: A bit short, but I think it gets us to a nice start.)<strong>

**(I'll update a.s.a.p.)**

**(10.19.11. Decided to revamp the story, now having our lead as a line-soldier, since you never get to hear about them [it's always either the Jedi or the starship pilots]. And it works better for the Hoth part of the battle, at least.)  
><strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**(AN: Am thinking about having nameless chapters here as well. I don't know.)**

**(As a note, there will be a lot of stuff that has surfaced from the deleted scenes of both _ESB_ and _ROTJ_ in this fan-fic, as well as _some_ material from the novelizations [though Obi-wan won't be Owen Lars' brother]. As such, their time at Hoth is going to be long, dark and, if given the right conditions, rather frightening.)**

**(Will have some OCs, but several _EU_ characters and others from various ffs of mine shall also appear.)**

**(10.19.11. Have shortened a little bit here and cut out the 'camaraderie' with the fighter pilots since that will happen later on.)  
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><p><em>Journal Entry 1: Three Years after the Battle of Yavin<em>.

_It's cold here. If I can say nothing else about this planet, for fear of giving away our position to Imperial spies, that I will say: it's too damn cold here.  
><em>

The first few weeks in the cold were jarring to say the least. The absence of sunlight made pretty much everyone in the base sleepy. Even the luminescent poles and glow-rods that were placed inside the base's tunnels and rooms only made it harder to keep ones' eyes from sliding shut.

Then came the stench. Scouting parties had discovered a race of repto-mammals identified as tauntauns. They were easy to tame, and therefore soon became the chosen pack-animals. The tauntauns brought with them a horrible stench that filled almost every corner they inhabited. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do. The pilots had their hands busy with taking care of their ships, especially the new T-47 air-speeders, keeping them from succumbing to the cold.

Everyone else, however, had other things on their mind. Command was concerned with maintaining the secrecy of this place, while the pilots had their concerns about their ships. The soldiers often had patrol duty. This affected Feor specifically.

Today it would be his turn out in the cold.

He was reporting to the base's south entrance. It was ray-shielded, so none of the heavy cold winds got through to the entrance. Also, the entrance was at the end of a cave tunnel, quite safe from the howling winds outside. A group of officers and some soldiers were getting ready for their journey out into the cold, placing the warm hats about their heads. In the circle, the young Commander Luke Skywalker was briefing them on their mission.

"Command's Standard Operating Procedure," Skywalker said as Drex joined in. "Is to scout the area surrounding the base. We haven't picked up any life-readings, but we can never be certain unless we go out there at once. Now, keep the radio channels open unless you find something. Radio signal will get weaker the farther away from the base we get, so all we'll be working on is the power cells in our back-packs."

Several of those around nodded and murmured their understanding.

"The base's call-sign will be Echo Base." he continued. "Senesca will be Echo 1, Hobby's Echo 2, and I'm Echo 3. Deck Officer Rey will give out the rest of your call-signs. Good luck, guys."

Officer Rey started assigning call-signs to the scouts. Feor was Echo 11. He leaped atop the smelly, wooly tauntaun and gave the creature a kick in the haunches. The beast brayed then took off out the shield. Feor felt a slight tingling as he passed through the shield, then a sudden chill as he was outside in the cold environment. He wrapped the shroud over his face and snapped his goggles onto his eyes. He turned the tauntaun left, the darkness of the cave being replaced by the dull white of the sunless day.

The wind whistled around his covered ears, the soft crunch of the tauntaun's feet in the snow and his own breathing, loud in his own ears, were all the noises he heard as he rode out into the white oblivion. There was little to see as it were, just dunes and hills of white snow and ice as far as the eye could see.

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><p>He didn't know how long he had been out there. Maybe an hour, maybe more. It was definitely a late patrol, for the shadows were getting longer with each minute spent in the frigid wasteland. The others were starting to go back, about five of the twenty sent out were still on the look-out. He was one of those five.<p>

_Well_, he thought, after the seventh lap of his patrol route. _I guess I can head in now._

He turned the tauntaun around and headed on his way back to the south entrance. Just then, he remembered that some of the others had said, on the com, that they would return to the base via the main entrance. Maybe he could do the same? After all, as long as he checked in, it didn't matter which entrance he went in through, right?

"This way, boy," he said to the tauntaun. "We're going back to base."

The tauntaun brayed then ran off in the direction, warbling as it went. They mounted a tall hill and were now within sight of the huge cavernous entrance to Echo Base. Just a few minutes more and they'd be back in the relative warmth of the base.

Feor pulled on the reins, bringing the tauntaun to a halt. He saw something at the bottom of the hill, in the large valley that stretched out beyond the main base entrance. It was almost the same color of the snow, white and all, but looked a little yellow-ish as well. He took out his macro-binoculars and zoomed in on the target.

A gray horn stood motionless in the white snow.

He jumped off the tauntaun and slid down the white hill to the bottom. The braying of his tauntaun sounded faint just behind him, but he was now back on his feet and waddling through the heavy snow toward the yellow-white mound. He suddenly came to a halt.

It was a tauntaun, lying on its side in the snow.

Feor heard the cry of his own tauntaun and saw it take off back the way it had come, back to the south entrance. Now he was on his own, not but ninety meters from the main entrance. Turning to the beast, he gave it a push. It did not respond. He reached up to his wrist and pressed the com-link open.

"Anyone out there?" he called out. "This is Echo 11. Echo 3, Echo 8? Anyone else! Report!"

There was a moment of fuzz, then a voice called out.

"Echo 7 here."

"Echo 8 here." another voice said. This one sounded feminine.

"I'm outside the base's shield doors, Zone 1, I guess." he reported. "I found a dead tauntaun lying in the snow. My own tauntaun got spooked and ran."

"I'm near your area, Echo 11." Echo 8 said. "I'll be right there."

"I'm on my way." Echo 8's gruff voice added.

"Roger, Echo 11 out."

Feor walked over to the dead tauntaun and took out his macro-binoculars, looking about here and there. No sign of anything as of yet, his mount had not returned, which bothered him. The base officers would want to know this for certain, but he couldn't drag a full-grown tauntaun back to the base all on his own.

The noise of another braying tauntaun caught his attention. The newcomer came to a halt and a small figure dropped off its back and ran to his side.

"There you are!" the woman's voice said from beneath the shroud. "This it?"

"Yes," Feor nodded. "Where's Echo 7?"

"On his way." she returned. "But we've got to get you in quick. Base protocol says our shield doors close at 2200 hours, and I didn't want you to get stuck out here."

"What time is it?" Feor asked.

"Don't know, but it's getting late." Echo 8 stated, looking up at the sky. Though the clouds kept out the sun, the overall darkness showed that they were definitely on the edge of night.

"Can't we call the base for help?" Feor asked.

"Maybe, I'll check." she tapped her comlink. "Echo 8 to Echo Base. We need an EVAC from Zone 1, we're about ninety meters north of the shield doors, bearing..." She looked about. "...1.5."

Another braying sound was heard. The second one stopped his mount by Echo 8's mount and then ran up to join them.

"What have we got here?" the gruff Corellian asked.

"It's dead, Captain Solo." the woman said.

"I can _see_ that!" he returned. "Any sign of damage?"

"Negative," Feor stated. "The base's med-personnel will have to examine it thoroughly to see what killed it."

"Well, I guess you're right, then." he said.

Almost half an hour later, the sound of more tauntauns braying was heard coming from the giant shield doors. Their back-up had finally arrived.

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><p>They were now in the base's tauntaun stables, Feor, Echo 8 and Captain Solo. Several others from the Command Center, including Commander Skywalker, were also there. The cadaver was laying down, being examined by a med-droid.<p>

"Analysis, 2-1B?" Commander Skywalker asked.

"I have examined the tauntaun fully," the droid stated. "The skin around the neck shows signs of strangulation, as well as the high levels of adrenaline in the creature's bloodstream."

"What does that mean exactly?" Captain Solo added.

"This creature was strangled to death." 2-1B answered plainly.

Feor was shocked to hear this. He knew that those creatures were hardy and stubborn. Whatever killed it must be quite something, about as powerful as ten Wookies, it seemed.

"D'you know what this means, don't you?" Commander Skywalker whispered to Captain Solo as they left the stables. Feor caught the tail end of their conversation.

"Yeah," Captain Solo returned. "We're not as alone out here as we think."

The thought of being trapped here on a planet with a creature possessing the strength of ten Wookies, and a hostile one at that, was not a pleasing thought in the slightest.

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><p><strong>(AN: Wampas ftw! The entirety of the Echo Base wampa sub-plot will be explored at first, since I thought it worked. It would definitely make Hoth a lot scarier, having these giant creatures [swimming, as said the original drafts] through the snow and terrorizing the Rebels.)<strong>

**(More on character development, especially that of Feor Drex, in the next chapter. Tell me what you think of this so far, if you please.)  
><strong>


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